Under seige

We have all been attacked by the most nastiest of viruses. John actually took the day off on Tuesday with the intent of taking care of me but was too wiped out to do much of anything. No knitting, no eating, just rest and fluids.

Just the facts, ma'am...

I've been in a very strage place the past few days, stranger than the place I normally inhabit. Some knitting has been going on - in fact the Silky Sock socks just have 8 more rounds of single rib to go until I can weave in the ends and call them done. I made myself a Dreams Swatch scarf out of a lonely skein of red Cottonade on Wednesday while Michael didn't sleep. I'm about half-way done the second Noro legwarmer.

Actually, I've barely knitted the past two days, my mind and mood have been elsewhere. I can't really translate things to words, so I'm going to take a shower and capture Pokemon.

Gotta catch them all!

Just because...

I know I'm supposed to be knitting and sitting on a heating pad, but here goes...

A cool comic about the suprising twist end of the last Harry Potter book.

This just cracked me up the first time I saw a commercial for it on TV. I called John into the room saying, "Look, they've made a C'Thulhu Hot Wheels set."

Cleaned things up a bit

Not too much going on tonight. Michael and I spent the day out and I am once again reminded that I really need to get myself to a chiropractor. I know we walked just under four miles today, but my pelvis is very unhappy with me - I think someone has replaced my SI joints with broken glass. Actually I know adjustments are only half the battle - I really need PT too as this is has been a life-long problem, but I'll tackle one thing at a time.

Oh, and bother beyond bothers - my new stroller's rear tire is flat. I'm going out on Thursday morning to get my driver's permit so I can pop into Target to get a pump and a patch kit. Frankly, I need to spend the day in tomorrow anyway so it's just as well.

In knitting news, I have 2 finished models and three half-finished models for my Knitty submission. I have to get cracking on my MDC Holiday Helper's KAL stuff for February. I have about 1/3 of one leg of the longies done. The one LYS that has 12" circulars doesn't have a size 6 in stock. I'm going to continue on the 16" circular - it changes my gauge a bit but it means that I don't get those tightened stitches on either side from using magic loop. I have about 1/2 an inch left on the Silky Sock socks before I can start the cuff ribbing and finally finish them. I did an inch or so on the legwarmer earlier this evening. I am setting the goal to get three things finished in the next 48 hours so I can start a KAL on MDC to make this bag. I'm going to use the yarn I overdyed back in December to make it.

I've stayed on the computer for much longer than I planned, socks must be finished!

New horizons

First things first - Michael took a nap today!!!! Granted it involved a little bit of pleading and crying on my part (yes, I was that mother in Starbucks this afternoon). It was one of those mornings with multiple meltdowns over seemingly insignificant things and other behaviors that just got on my last nerve. I ended up rocking him gently in the stroller until he drifted off and he actually slept for almost two hours so I know he really needed it. I am looking forward to this week of 40+ degree weather because it means that we can spend as much time out and about as we can. It will be nice to walk to town and then let him walk for a while beside me to burn off some energy.

He woke this morning at five saying, "'bye Wonder Pets," over and over in the most sad, forlorn voice imaginable. John was in the room with him and couldn't figure out what he was saying since Michael tends to swallow the middle syllable of a lot of words (John kept asking about wombats to give you a clue about Michael's enunciation). I came in and gave him a big hug and spent the rest of the night with him. We think he was having a dream about the Wonder Pets and was very sad when he woke up and they weren't there. This is so cool - not his sadness of course, but that he was having that intense of a dream. It is so incredible watching him develop.

I have been feverishly knitting the models for my next Knitty submission. I feel it has a very good chance of being accepted since it is such a neat design but I have a lot of work to do getting the models made and the pictures taken. I'm pretty sure the pictures were the main downfall of my first submission and I don't want that to be the case again this time. In addition to that I am also making stock for my Knitty Keen Etsy store-front. I'll be selling hand-made stitch markers, patterns, kits, a few smaller items, and hand-dyed yarns and possibly roving. I just ordered a whole bunch of dyes in a co-op which I should have in a few weeks. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for my yarns yet. I'm thinking of starting out with some of the Knit Picks un-dyed yarns and seeing how that goes then branching into some higher-end yarns like Henry's Attic and the like.

I am very excited and nervous about this. It has the potential to provide some nice pin money every month which we could really use and I'd feel like I was contributing a bit to the household in a more concrete way. As soon as I get some stuff off my needles, I'll be making more regular posts to Knitty Keen to keep people updated on what's going on. The stitch markers and some patterns should be going live by the end of the month.

Lastly, I just wanted to apologize - I am really not a bad speller (except for double consonants, they are my downfall), but I am a bad typist. I actually took the time to run this through the spell check on Word so hopefully the worst offenders have been caught.

Grammar is a completely different story and cannot be helped.

'night all!

Sigh....

John and I had what was probably the most lovely date we've been on since Michael was born this afternoon.

I love my husband.

sigh

grumble, grumble, grumble...

Went to set up the Noro last night to knit the other legwarmer. On one of my skeins, the yarn broke and they attached another piece - the problem is that it's from the wrong place in the colorway. AGGHHHHHH! Despite my Herculean (?sp) efforts, my legwarmers are not going to match excatly. Since I have already spent way too much (4 balls of Noro Kureon) on a pair of legwarmers, I cannot justify buying another ball. I will just have to live the with contant galling reminder that my legwarmers do not match exactly or I will have to frog the first one back to where the snafu occured so I can get them to match.

Frogging, here I come...

Mwahhahaha....

I'm going for it again folks. I just worked out the final kinks in a pattern that I am planning on submitting to Knitty. I think it's super cool (but I am of course biased). I just have to get the models knocked out so I can have as much time as possible to get good photos, which I am sure was the downfall of my previous submission.

On other knitting fronts, I was able to get to the basement LYS this afternoon to pick up another two balls of Noro to finish my legwarmers. Talk about frustration - I spent a good fifteen minutes in that store removing balls of Noro from wire bookcases to find the color I needed. Thankfully I got the last two balls they had so I'm going to try and knock them out tonight so I can wear them tomorrow. The husband and I are having a date day to celebrate my birthday and Valentine's day - shopping and dinner at a fondue restaurant. Of course he will have to suffer through the yarn shop, but I'll find ways to make it up to him, say no more...

Off to make dinner, 'night all!

Cabin Fever

Michael is asleep - Yay!!!!

The past two days he has refused to take a nap and I just wanted to cry - in fact I'm pretty sure I did both days. We've been pretty shut-in recently because the weather has just been too cold to do much more than dart from place to place assuming we even make it out of the house. The cabin fever is made even worse but my continuing nicotine detox - it will be one month tomorrow if I don't count the half a pack I smoked two weeks ago. I've not been very good at balancing things lately - so much energy is being spent on keeping myself sane that there is precious little left over for things like housework.

Michael's sleeping situation would definitely be improved if I did some hard playing with him every day but I just haven't been able to find the energy to do it. I often have to push myself to do things like that to begin with since it's just not my nature to really "play", I literally have to schedule it into the day and have set the kitchen timer to get 20 minutes of real play in with him. This is not to say that I don't interact with him - we are constantly talking with each other and he shows me what he's playing with and I offer help when he needs it. It's the get down on the floor and throw the ball around kind of stuff that I'm not good at. Since I removed my main sanity-saving behavior, it's been real tough. He is definitely sensing it too as we've seen some separation anxiety resurface and the fact that I actually had to lay down on the airmatress next to his crib to help him fall asleep which I can't even remember the last time I needed to do that.

I hate this feeling of not being able to find baby-zen. As much as it seems that I am complaining about my son constantly, it's really me who has to find my way. Aside from the chemical addiction to nicotine, I had a huge psychological addiction to smoking. Stepping out into my backyard for five minutes to have a cigarette provided a much needed break - those were five minutes that I wasn't and could not be a mom. Even if I wasn't getting my down time during the week, I still had those breaks throughout the day and they really saved my sanity. The problem is that it's been very hard to find something to fit into that sort of time interval. Knitting has been great, but it's impracticall and highly annoying to me to just knit in five-minute intervals. The same goes for spinning, hopping on the computer, and any number of other things. Yes, I could go out back to practice deep breathing for five minutes, but thus far I've been resistant to it.

I guess what it is that the smoking provided was not just the break, but the break from being a mom and a wife. I love my job with all of my heart, it's what I've always wanted to do and it has completed me in ways I cannot even begin to express. Maybe it's because I put so much of myself into it, that loosing those breaks is really hard. I take so much onto myself that I need to be able to shrug it off for five minutes at a time so that I can continue to shoulder the load. Smoking was the ultimate selfish act. I was feeding my addiction and slowly killing myself to boot. Now that smoking isn't there to "necessitate" those breaks, my mind can't get itself around the seemingly selfish aspect of taking a break. Breaks are not in any way, shape or form selfish. I need downtime in order to regroup and be the best mom and wife I can be, I cannot function without them. I've fallen into the trap of being the selfless mom and I don't know how to get out.

The weather looks like it will be bearable the next couple of days, so Michael and I won't be quite as housebound. I'm getting back on the ball with taking my meds and vitamins so that will provide some chemical relief from the weather and my nicotine detox. Last but not least, I am getting out of the house tonight for some much needed alone time. This is the first time in weeks I've gotten out by myself and I really have no one to blame but myself for it. More than anything else I have to make myself take this time because I function so much better with it.

It's been a day

...and I'm in too strange of a mood to bother much with any real punctuation and form (up yours, Strunk and White).

Decided that I wanted to make myself some legwarmers. Saw a pattern posted on one of my message boards, treated myself to two balls of Noro Kureon for my birthday, and got to work. Whoever wrote this pattern must have been smoking crack because there is no way that you can get a pair of legwarmers as the pattern is written out of 100g of yarn. I am more than a little pissed because the store I bought the yarn in is the basement LYS which means I can only go without Michael which means I can't go for some time. I'm going to stop at the other LYS tomorrown to see if they have the same dye lot - wish me luck.

Verizon's (I so want to call them Bell) central computer hiccuped this morning and I was without phone service (and more importantly internet) for the better part of the day.

Michael refused to nap today. Strung-out mom and over-tired toddler do not a good mix make.

I really, really, REALLY want a cigarette right now.

Flipping weather can't decide what it wants to be and when it does it seems to settle on wind-chills in the teens. I love the cold but I can't drag Michael out in the stroller in 20mph winds.

I just feel tense and bizarre. There are many things to write about but I just don't have the attention-span necessary to turn them into corherent blog entries, not that I claim that this gem is in anyway coherent.

I have to check my potroast.

Short and Sweet

Just the list tonight, folks...

• John lost his neck warmer on his way home from work so I knocked one out for him, this seques nicely into the next bullet...


• Check out Knitty Keen for my first post in ages and (drumroll please) a new free pattern to download - a neck warmer. Almost 90% of the hits I get on the site are looking for this pattern. In the coming months I will be spending a lot more time doing things with it - I have ambitions


• I am soooo close to finished the second Silky Sock sock, infact I am about three-quarters the way through the heel. I had hoped to be able to wear them today (Friday), but other things needed to be done.


• The first of the Super-Mecha socks is finished. I hope to cast-on for its mate over the weekend


• I finally made Micheal a leg warmer/bundle-me type of thing for his stroller. I piled blankets on him the past two days so we could venture out and since it's a pain to do that and the cold weather is showing no signs of leaving I had to come up with a more permenant solution (not to mention that I bought the fleece for this project last year). It has a lot of short cuts, but it will do the job nicely.


• Yet again, we took time from our busy day to celebrate the beheading and subsequent death of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland

There is more involving a swift and some Noro that I plan to treat myself to on Friday to become a pair of legwarmers. Pics will be up by the end of the weekend.

'night all!

It's almost that time....

and I'm not telling you what that time is *wink*

On a completely different note, I think I am finally getting to the place where I am ready to start to seek out other moms of autistic children. I've actually posted several time this week on a special needs forum I belong to and I think having real-life support is going to be a big help.

Other than that, da-da-daaa-da-da-daaaaaa!

I can be seen

I just finished going through and fixing it so you can now view my blog in both Firefox and IE. I though I needed to use the same structure for a fixed three-column layout in XML as I used for HTML but it turns out that you don't. I'll probably mess with it later tonight to get all of the formatting replaced, although I might keep it like this for a little while until I can come up with a banner graphic that I really like.

On a knitting front, I just cast-on for a pair of Snazzy Pants longies that I am making for the MDC Holiday Helpers Knit-a-long. I was almost finished the first of the Super-Mecha socks but when I tried it on, the modified double rib I used was too tight. I really dislike double rib, mine almost always looks like crap. To fix this, I generally plait my purl stitches (wrap the yarn clockwise around your needle rather that counter-clockwise). While the ribbing looked fantastic, just having half of the stitches twisted made it too tight to fit over my huge feet so I'm going with single rib. Michael really fought sleep on Sunday night, so I got a good two inches done on the second Silky Sock sock while I was sitting in there with him, so with some luck, I'll have that done by the end of the week. I'm planning on casting-on for the Baby Surprise Jacket again on Wednesday or Thursday.

This has been a blah week for me. It's too damn cold (-5 windchill) to even think about venturing outside and I feel like complete crap since I am having the mother of all periods right now. I don't know exactly what's going on with my body right now, but it is not pleasant.

We had a bit of a fright over the weekend when we looked into Head Start for Michael. Several of his therapists have spoken about Head Start for him since I can't pay for a private preschool with hand knits. We were very suprised to find out that we had to be at o below poverty level to qualify for it. I have since founf out that they reserve several slots for special needs kids so it shouldn't be a huge problem. I did find out that another child one of his therapists see has been placed in a special needs preschool in an excellent program. She told me that this child is on par with Michael in terms of abilities/delays/temperment and that the preschool is an inclusive program - that there are typically devloping children there as well as spectrum kids, but since it's in a facility that specializes in special needs kids, the spectrum kids still get all of the individual attention that they need. If you managed to make any sense out of the preceeding sentence this is fantastic news for us. I had pretty much eliminated this program as a possibility since I felt Michael was too high functioning to qualify. It is by no means a done deal and there is still a chance that he won't qualify, but if he does I think this is exactly what he needs.

Michael will be waking soon, so I'm off to grab a bite to eat (hummus and cucmbers - yay!). TTFN!

Aghhhh!

Just looked at the blog in Firefox - you can't see any of the posts!!!! I have to do some serious playing with things to find out what is wrong.

If anyone out there knows something, please share.

New skin

The banner graphic isn't where I want it yet, but Michael has just woken up so I have to dash.

Even more unflippin-believable!

Take a look at this lovely tidbit posted on The Lactivist.

The mind truly, truly reels.

Back to square one

I was having quite a day today - actually it's been quite a week. After bursting into tears at the end of a not so emotionally charged episode of Scrubs (two episodes actually), I called my sister to come over with her cigarettes. I know that if I actually bought a pack it would really be the end of this quit attempt. So the needle countdown has been reset and I have to start my nicotine detox all over again.

I'm not sure what is going on with Michael right now. He's been stimming a lot and he's back to leading/pushing us when he wants something. I was talking about it with his speech therapist the other day and we think he may have had some sort of developmental leap and his functional vocabulary just isn't big enough to cope with it. I admit that I brought this up with both of his therapists for some feedback (read:confirmation) on the autism dx and got it. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. It's so easy to forget sometimes, and then there are the times it smacks you in the face. We went to storytime last week at John's library. It was the first time that I just sat down and let him do his own thing unless he was trying to take food from someone. Usually I drive myself a little crazy at these types of events, following him around the room, vainly trying to get him to sit quietly on the carpet square like all of the other children. Why oh why can't there be at least one other seemingly hyper kid there instead of all of the stepford children sittly quietly staring at John with rapt attention? That image really is pushing it, but it's hard to see them sitting nicely while my child hops around the room, and I do mean that he litterally hopped around the room following the same path for most of story time. This was actually a vast improvement over past story times where we have had to leave the room several times because he was so overstimulated. Some of his behavior isn't too far outside the norm for a two and half year-old, but the problem is that he looks like he's four so I get the looks from other parents wondering why I am not controlling my child (and I admit that if I didn't know what I knew and Michael was like their child I be right there with them).

There are times when I am so happy about the progress that he's made that it's easy to overlook the little quirks, that the developmental ped was too conservative in her scoring on the ADOS test and she was mistaken. Then I have a day where everytime he's not actively engaged with me he's running in a circle in the middle of the living room or walking his circuit around the room, touching the same things everytime he passes them. It's just been hard this week because it feels like everything is so glaring, but enough whining about my lot in life.

On a knitting front, the first of the Super-Mecha socks are almost finished (I've been a bit obsessive, can you tell?). I did the heel this morning and have about 5 more lace repeats until I can start the cuff ribbing. I'll post pics tomorrow.

'night all...